A blog about local life, useful tips for tough women and general pondering regarding their tough lives

A Blog’s Birth

When and how is a blog conceived? Why was mine born in Brixton?

I always wanted to be a journalist or a writer since I was even younger than teenager. I felt I had things to say and quite decent communication skills to put two concepts together in a few lines. Of course the more I grew up, the more I accumulated experience which made me quite naturally address my points of view and notice the soft grey in my previously strong black and white opinions. This process is still on today, it’s something that never ends: I understand now how you are never completely right or wrong, and nobody is, the line is so subtle.

I moved from Italy with my partner to the UK in October 2005 and since then I have always been living in the same two bedrooms flat, on the last floor of a massive and quite out of date Victorian house in a residential street just off Brixton Hill. I entered that flat that I was not even in my mid twenties. I am both Italian and French, my English was not fluent at the time. We were students, therefore broke, therefore we flat-shared with other students and other couples; our relationship consolidated through the years so we got married; we returned into this very same flat from King’s College Hospital maternity ward, we had become parents. In the 10 years I lived in Brixton I turned from just over a teenager into the woman I am today, with all my failures and my successes.

But it is only recently (not over a year ago) that I realized what a difficult relationship I had with women in general and with myself being one of them. One day quite suddenly it came to the surface that all of my life I had had a very low esteem for my comrades who I considered mainly manipulative and weak. I remember thinking for many years I would be better off behaving like a man, probably even being one of them, as they seemed to me stronger and smarter, more efficient and factual and even society seemed to make their lives easier than ours. I used to see the world as if men were always right and genuine compared to their female counterparts who to my impression always had a hidden agenda behind any tactic they used in all their relationships.

I did not know at the time that I had categorized all women in the same way due to the first woman I had met in my life. My mother, of course. I don’t want to go into details with my story but just so you understand a bit better, my relationship with her has always been quite disastrous due to the fact that she is nowhere near the female role model I needed growing up. Without wanting to judge her or blame her whatsoever, I honestly find her weak, always complaining, hugely lacking self confidence, not at ease with her own body or her feminine side… You can imagine being tough to be a girl and having to learn how to be a woman from someone who has such fear of being herself and who you strongly suspect may have preferred to have a son all of her life (unfortunately I am an only child).

When I made the realization on to why I may have a distorted reflection of how women are, it’s only then that I discovered what it really feels to be a woman myself. I had become a mother already, roughly three years before, giving birth to a little boy though, so there had been no risk of competition or misunderstanding a member of the category I considered superior to me anyway. This time around I was seven months pregnant without knowing the gender of my second baby and despite that, it’s funny how I was desperately hoping for and at the same time terribly dreading to have a baby girl (and it was the case).

Once I had faced my own feelings towards women, I decided to start accepting and embracing the woman that I am as a precious and wonderful unique human being without trying to be something else far from my true nature. Therefore I made a promise to myself: because only females by definition can give birth to another human being, with this new delivery in less than 2 months ahead of me I would symbolically be born once again as a woman and especially if I was to give birth to a baby girl.

Life is so ironic sometimes. On the morning of the 1st of May of that same year my daughter was born as an amazing unplanned home delivery in Brixton, without the help of any paramedics as we did not made it to the hospital, nor the ambulance arrived in time. We delivered her on our own, my husband and I, and this not only meant to me a much better experience than first time around at the hospital, but it mainly represented the most empowering event I have ever lived in my whole life, especially as a woman.

And that day this new woman entered into my life: my daughter, the most important girl I have ever met. That is why this blog is dedicated to her, to support her and so many other women through their though lives by sharing all the tips I learned as a woman myself. Because there is much we go through as women and especially as mothers!

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One thought on “A Blog’s Birth”

Well done to you for starting the blog, it means a lot to you and to a new start in your life as a mother/woman/girl.

It is not the easiest of journeys being a mother but it is amazing. We discover a new dimension to ourselves we didn’t have before. And then we are the guide/educators/love givers to these little people that are so dependent on us.

They will carry us with them for ever and hopefully we can do a ‘good job’ 😊!